Only a few hours now before the deadline for entries to the Make Your Mark Challenge! This is the UK-wide schools’ enterprise competition, which launched on the morning of 17 November, as part of Global Entrepreneurship Week. It’s in the fourth year, and a massive 56,000 students across the UK are taking part.

The Challenge to them is to ‘Create an entrepreneurial idea inspired by the Olympic and Paralympic Values’. We’re running it with the London Organising Committee of the 2012 Olympic Games – in thousands of schools. Check out some of the pictures of schoolchildren taking part from around the country!

So, who will win? We’ll see. It’s a tough competition, with regional finals and then a national finals event in London in December. But it’s by far our best-known activity. It really brings entrepreneurship to young people, in a fun and friendly way. It helps teachers build a culture of enterprise in the classroom. And, every year, it throws up hundreds of good business ideas.

So it definitely deserves pride of place in the UK’s contribution to Global Entrepreneurship Week this year. Let’s see what ideas the next generation generates!

G’Day from Down Under and what a good day it was. After brainstorming new proof of concept center models with leaders at The Innovation Center at Australia Technology Park (which is housed in the beautiful old Locomotive Workshops), Global Entrepreneurship Week / Australia shifted to Mousetrap Making Machines.

Now I have your attention and the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney has mine. What better way to reach all you guys who don’t think “business” is for you than to invite you to a massive museum of innovation. Packed full of inventions such as the first lawn mower and first Black Box (which was red by the way) you can see, touch and feel the excitement of ideas and innovations. While how to build a better mousetrap machine was the subject of yesterday’s event, leaders there are exploring much bigger plans for 2009 — including a possible hook up with museums of innovation around the world. Now that would get our attention — celebrate all the great strides our entrepreneurs have taken for our planet — and be inspired to be the author of the next big idea for your country.

Congratulations are due to IBM and The New South Wales Department of State and Regional Development and Social Alchemy for putting together an outstanding group of tomorrow’s entrepreneurs. I joined a collection of rock star innovators — including Lars Rasmussen of Google Maps fame — in addressing the group. What I had not expected was the collection of talent in the audience which included a group of dedicated young entrepreneurs with ideas and business plans and timelines for new businesses from fashion to technology. I wish I had brought my checkbook — they kept me captivated well into the evening.

These young entrepreneurs did not represent the lifestyle entrepreneurs I was advised to expect in Sydney. While the World Bank ranks Australia 9th out of 181 economies in ease of doing business, some voiced to me concern that most of the new businesses were more replicative businesses rather that high-growth gazelles. Far from it. These were disruptive types set on churning ideas and new enterprises.

Unleashing such innovation among Australians should help the government meet its goals. Since he was elected last November, popular Labour Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, has put climate change and keeping Australia’s export-fueled economic boom at the top of his priorities. Both priorities are dependent on the ability of entrepreneurship to flourish.

Tackling the global warming crisis will require innovations of the kind that only entrepreneurs of the type I met are willing to pursue. Creative, innovative thinking is well-suited to developing viable new energy sources and environmentally friendly products and practices. Moreover, the OECD sees Australia as a model for other countries in efficiency of the energy sector.

A good day for me yesterday and a good week for Australians ahead. This morning as I depart, Australia joins Speednetwork the Globe at First Fleet Park with its beautiful view of the harbor and Opera House. I will be blowing the whistle from the air Matt!

Gisborne, New Zealand — the first city to see the sun rise — hosted the first activity of Global Entrepreneurship Week. Mayor Meng Foon hosted a speednetworking session. Take a look at the lead-in to that session.

Following Oli Barrett’s exhilarating Speednetwork the Globe Tour across 6 continents, The Telegraph - national UK newspaper - has featured a great story in their Digital Life section.

In the article, Oli outlines the purpose of his trip and the benefits of speednetworking: “My mission: to host ’speednetworking’ events and to promote Global Entrepreneurship Week. The idea of ’speednetworking’ is similar to speed-dating - people have just three minutes to talk to each other before moving on to their next partner. The aim is to enable people to meet a succession of interesting new individuals. Far too often, people leave events having chatted to only a couple of people, or having just talked to their existing contacts.”

The feature follows Oli on his whistlestop tour and looks at how he kept in contact with us from all corners of the world through a varied digital discourse. The world of digital media is fast becoming the key facilitator for global conversations. Uploading videos, photos, twitters and blogs is the easiest way to reach out to the world and create a global community. As Oli himself says: “Some people travel to escape the crowds. I went to connect with them…the world is out there waiting to be connected with.”

Read the full article.

See the Speednetwork page to find out how you can make connections - fast!

“I would like to spend the whole of my life traveling, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend at home” William Hazlitt

It seems like only days, not weeks ago that I was standing in Trafalgar Square, preparing for a Whistlestop Tour around the world.  My mission;  to promote Speednetwork the Globe in advance of the first ever Global Entrepreneurship Week, taking place this November 17th-23rd all over the world, in over seventy five countries!

From a farewell lunch in London, I flew three and a half thousand miles to Toronto, where I stood beneath the mighty CN Tower before the first of twelve Speednetworking Events across six continents.  The timeframe I’d been set to complete this global challenge; just twenty two days!

In San Francisco, the terrific YouNoodle hosted Whistlestop Two, where a fun crowd experienced the buzz of meeting people they had never met before, for just three minutes.  At the end of each three minutes, a whistle blows, and you have to move on to the next person!  The only three rules are that you must meet someone you’ve never met before, you can talk about whatever you want to talk about, and when the whistle blows you MUST change partners!

From California I confronted the sights and sounds of Mexico City head-on with a gathering in South America’s tallest building.  I even dusted off my schoolboy Spanish, with extremely mixed results…

Santiago, Chile’s Capital was my South American stop and although, technically, no Speednetworking took place, I did enjoy speed-meeting some fantastic local entrepreneurs from social network Bligoo, and meeting with the fine folks at the University of Santiago.

Australian Matt Jones, from Social Alchemy is exactly the sort of person you want meeting you at the airport.  He’s fun, friendly and the has the kind of energy that makes you forget your eighteen hour journey in an instant.  Breakfast by Bondi Beach and an afternoon with the view to end all views (over Sydney Harbour), prepared me for the following day’s Speednetworking, one of my highlights of the trip.

In Singapore, I was reminded that no matter where in the world you are, there is nothing, absolutely nothing which beats dinner with old friends.  My late night catch up was just what I needed to refuel before meeting a great and focused crowd at Singapore’s University, the morning after the Australian event!

Rivalling Matt Jones for ‘host with the very most’ is Malaysia’s one and only Dash.  Warisan Global’s CEO is the man to know in Kuala Lumpur and beyond, and within an hour of arriving, I was being interviewed by a business radio station before being whisked off to dinner.  The next day’s KL event had the most incredible energy, with  what seemed like a hundred camera-phones flashing and thousands of business cards flying!

As it turned out, the buzz of Kuala Lumpur was a suitable preparation for the energy of Hong Kong, where the excellent Houghton Wan showcased the city magnificently, before hosting a memorable event.

 A twin-propeller plane flew me into Gaborone, Botswana’s capital, on the eve of a packed day of meetings with the British Council, the British High Commission and the Department for Women’s Affairs.  The final meeting over, it was off to Gaborone’s University to prepare for the evening’s Speednetworking, ably co-hosted by AIESEC. 

If entrepreneurship is the new rock and roll, then you will find it hard to find a better Rock Star than Rich Mulholland.  Living between Cape Town and Johannesburg, his company, Missing Link was a Speednetworker’s dream come true for a refuel and catch up on landing in South Africa. Rich even whisked me through the streets of Jo’Burg on route to the cracking location of Wits University for Whistlestop number ten!  A speedy ride to the airport gave me the chance to have a good conversation with host Nepeti Nicanor, a research fellow at the Wits Centre for Entrepreneurship.

If you were designing your own trip along these lines, you might at this point be tempted to schedule a day off, or at least one without an event.  But that wouldn’t be in the true spirit of Speednetworking!  And so, having landed from Johannesburg at six in the morning, it was off for a ten o’clock flight (from a different airport, of course!) to Dublin.  My terrific host, Brian Martin was ready and waiting, and he was extremely accommodating of the fact that, the day before, I had agreed to write a twelve hundred word feature for a British national newspaper! And so, after a short retreat to a laptop, I jumped into a Trinity College Speednetworking session.  The Dublin event gave me the chance to catch up with the person who, behind the scenes had been organising this whole trip;  an unsung hero, the one and only Marilise Saghbini - a total star!

Thursday 9th October saw the twelfth and final Whistlestop, back in my home city of London.  The team at the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) were ushering in the new year of their entrepreneurial society and we were joined by friendly Global Entrepreneurship Week colleagues (including mastermind Scott Cain, with whom I first plotted the trip) - a fitting end to the tour, and, I hope, a great beginning to the coming unleashing of activity…

Try as it might, my Whistlestop Tour hasn’t done anything other than strengthen my love of Speednetworking.  As a way to get people meeting each other, fast, it’s simple, it’s cheap and it works.  Literally hundreds of people came up to me at events saying how much they had enjoyed it.  And, to be honest, how much they had been dreading it at first!

During Speednetwork the Globe, thousands of events will take place during Global Entrepreneurship Week.  Will you host one?  Could you host one?  Will you attend one?  Could you spread the word about one?

The single biggest question I’ve been pondering over the last month has been this;

“How can you make Speednetwork the Globe events truly GLOBAL?”

Is it the people you invite?  The conversations which take place?  The technology you use to connect event with event?

What do YOU think?!

On my travels, I’ve met hundreds of people, and loved keeping in touch with existing friends and colleagues along the way.  Hopefully you’ve had time to catch up on the trip once or twice and if it’s brought Global Entrepreneurship Week or Speednetwork the Globe onto your already busy radar, then, in a tiny way, I’ve done my job. 

So, this is a Speednetworker signing off for now, and in the spirit of Global Entrepreneurship Week, unleashing Speednetworking to you, and hoping you’ll pass it on, or better still, get involved!  I know that the team would love to hear from you so please drop them a line here.  Whatever you’re doing or planning for The Week and beyond, good luck! Thank you for tuning in, and whatever you do, please, keep in touch!

I’ve been catching up with Martha Cervantes, who works with Impulsa, hosts of the Mexico City Whistlestop Event.  

OB:  Hi Martha, can you tell me, briefly, what Impulsa does?

MC: We are Junior Achievement in Mexico.  We teach economics and financial literacy to students from K to 12 grade, through hands-on programs, taught by volunteers in the classroom.  We inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy.

OB:  Excellent!  And how are plans shaping up for Global Entrepreneurship Week? 

MC: Impulsa has been working with Endeavor.  Between us, the main, national activities we have planned include;

-       a Launch Inauguration Event, in Mexico City.  We are inviting the Minister of Economy and plan to have 1000 students attending.  At the end of this Inauguration event we will release helium balloons (one for each student) with an entrepreneurship message written by each student.  At the same time all partners in the country will do the same in their own cities (schools, universities, companies, etc).

-       a National Job Shadow Day.  Hundreds of students will shadow a business man or women, executive, politician, or any other professional, in the area of interest of the student, for a complete working day.  These high school students will learn firsthand what the real work world is about.

-       We will launch an entrepreneurship portal that will link all JA entrepreneurship programs, plus many others that are in operation in the country.  The address will be www.mundoemprendedor.org.mx and will be supported by IBM servers and software.

-       Endeavor will have their Annual Gala Dinner during this week.

-       We have secured the support of several media leaders: Televisa and Grupo Editorial Expansion, among others.

-       IBM is actively participating in the week activities.

-       Currently we are following up on partners, to make sure that they are registered in the webpage and that are adding their activities to it.  We plan to have at least 100 partners registered.

OB:  That’s a terrific amount! Tell us about your Whistlestop Speednetworking Event event?  How was it?  What sort of people came?  What was the feedback like?

MC: It was a great oportunity to join people that could be involved  Global Entrepreneurship Week and to share expectations about the program.  

OB:  How can people get involved with what you’re doing in Global Entrepreneurship Week?

MC: They can contact us at Impulsa: (55) 5211-9444, Endeavor: (55) 5282-1680, or through the Unleashing Ideas website.

 OB:  Thanks Martha -  Any final messages for the reader of this blog?

MC:  This has been a very exciting challenge and we are looking forward for many successes, not only for us, but for everyone involved around the globe!

The penultimate Speednetworking event was at Trinity College Dublin.  Here’s Brian Martin explaining how it went!

I’ve been catching up with Kathy Yeung, from Incubator, who organised a terrific event in Hong Kong last week;

OB:  Kathy, tell us, briefly, what Incubator does?

KY: Incubator Limited is a hybrid social enterprise (profit and non-profit)
which was founded in 2006. We incubate line managers through providing
“co-creative coaching” training to corporates. The manager, who is currently
running a social enterprise at an NGO is empowered under these practical
training sessions. Moreover, we are the first player in Hong Kong to have
designed a social entrepreneurial learning program for young adults. We
believe with our experiences, we can make a good planning and strategy
on launching events such as Global Entrepreneurship Week. (more…)

I decide not to talk to her at first.  Partly because she is sporting a full-length, fully-done-up raincoat, in hearing-aid beige.  Partly, if I’m honest, because it’s the start of a thirteen hour long-haul flight to Johannesburg.  And being frightfully British, there’s always the outside chance that she may just be returning from the World Talking Championships.  The final reason for not saying hello, is that she’s asleep.  Well if a pre-take-off snooze is good enough for a gold medallist in a mac, then it’s good enough for me. So I slip into what I hope will be a quiet slumber.

I awake to find her reading my book.  Not browsing the outside cover, but reading the thing.  She has even picked up at chapter sixteen, exactly where I had put it down. The cheek!  The very cheek!  What to do?  What to say?  Should I summon the cabin crew with a poke of the bell button (overeacting to the felony surely?), or should I swipe my credit card phone, calling the police? Instead, I rather nonchalantly lean forward to the seat pocket in front of me, to pick out another choice of reading.  And that’s when I find my book.  My actual book, as opposed to the one which I have recently accused the fine woman of pilfering.  Two people, sat next to each other, long haul, reading the same chapter of the same book, bought in different locations (it transpires).

“What are the chances of that?”

I ask, with all of the warmth and forgiveness I can muster.  And so begins an entirely charming conversation. Which lasts for twelve and three quarter hours.  Not really, but it was enjoyable none the less. (more…)

“What’s that” the waiter says, pointing at the mini-box sticking out of the side of my laptop.“It’s a Flip”

“A what?!”

“A Flip.  It’s a video recorder.  I filmed this a few minutes ago.  Over there”

“Oh”

Well it didn’t get me any money off my diet coke, reader, but it was worth a try.  (more…)